Microsoft Outlook, as well as Kopano/Zarafa clients, uses
MAPI at the source code level. So-called
MAPI providers (essentially plugins) abstract and take care of the underlying transport mechanism.
Kopano-server exposes its functionality over stream sockets and uses the
HTTP protocol, with data being serialized using
SOAP/XML. The commands sent in the XML data are specific to Kopano/Zarafa. Conversely, the Kopano MAPI provider implements this protocol on the client side. These HTTP connections can be secured with
TLS/SSL and be proxied if desired. Because Exchange instead uses MAPI/RPC on the wire, the stock Outlook connector for Exchange could not be used and traditionally required the Windows version of the Zarafa MAPI provider (a product that is proprietary and unsupported since 2016–04). Outlook versions 2013 and 2016, support ActiveSync, a protocol also used by many mobile clients, and by using the
Z-push software on the server side, ActiveSync requests can be translated and such clients can effectively talk to a Kopano server as well. Kopano Core generally stores its data in a
MySQL-compatible database. Attachments can be saved on the filesystem, Amazon S3, or the database may be used to place chunked blobs. The server can get its user information from
LDAP/
Active Directory,
Unix user accounts or the MySQL database. Additional gateways for the
IMAP,
POP3 and
iCalendar/
CalDAV protocols are provided. Kopano WebApp (and DeskApp which is the equivalent stand-alone application) are full-featured applications which include support for mail, calendars, group calendars, public folders and many more functionalities. WebApp can be integrated with many plugins which can be added to the installation. Kopano provides several plugins such as Files (cloud and storage access within WebApp), WebMeetings (video conference) and
S/MIME (which allows reading and sending encrypted email). Any developer can, however, write additional plugins using the WebApp plugin API. == Edition ==